Activision sends along news that the Call of Duty demo at the center of last
night's firestorm (story) will be released this evening all
across the internet, with no exclusivity. Here's the deal:

The recent
reaction to the upcoming Call of Duty demo has caught us here at
Activision by surprise. We're appreciative and excited about the high level of enthusiasm the game has received throughout the gaming community. Due
to the tremendous demand for the demo – we are answering the call by not only
making the demo freely available to all gamers at the same time, but early –
This Friday Night - just in time for the long weekend.

Gamespy has been a great partner - working with us so that we can make our fans
happy and give them a taste of a game they're clearly excited about. The demo
will be available across the net on fan and gaming coverage sites,
including GameSpy's FilePlanet.

We think you'll love Call of Duty, and we can't wait for you to play the demo.
Look for it Friday night!

The difference is this. A group of you that side with Fileplanet, keep claiming that all they where doing was a benign effort to make a $. Saying “their subscribers got the Demo a week earlier,” makes them out to sound not so bad, when in reality, they tried to take a free DEMO (Demonstration, Marketing Technique, i.e. not a product intended to make money for the producers) and force people to pay $$$’s for it, for those that wanted it on a fair release schedule.

Activision heard the outcry (either Consumer based, or Webmaster based) and decided that oh, maybe this was not the best marketing approach. We should advertise to everyone at the same time, not try and make money off of what at its core is an advertisement. Which when you think about it that way, seems like a stupid thing to shell out dollars for anyway.

And my “Ohhh, a Gift!” was not a question about the definition of a gift. It was a sarcastic comment to point out that their “Gift” as you call it, is not a thank you, it’s an encouragement for others to pay them money. Which is business, and I am not faulting them for providing specialized content for a fee. What I am faulting them for, is attempting to take a marketing technique by another company, and squeezing it for a few more $$’s, for themselves in an effort to only help their bottom line, not Activations, whose marketing technique it was to begin with.

/*New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled, the humiliating question arises, ``Why then are you not taking part in them?'' -H.G. Wells*/